According to Mearns, physically, the move was unlike Wheeldon’s previous choreographic experiences, which were mostly “very upright, a little quirky, but very classic.” It says.
“This is very, very confusing, rounded and falling off your feet,” she continued, adding that usually Wheeldon had to curb the way she danced, which was not prohibited. For this ballet, she said, he wanted that quality in every dancer.
Wheeldon’s approach to creating “From Me Within You” (titled from a line of Demel’s poem) was new to him. He wanted to work with Manning after meeting through a mutual friend of his. “I loved the juxtaposition of motion in the painting and the riot of stillness and color,” he said. “I was intrigued by their story, the non-story side.”
He asked Manning to create a painting inspired by Schoenberg’s score, deciding that it would be his starting point, rather than the traditional choreographic approach of music as the main inspiration.
In an interview prior to a rehearsal she attended, Manning said: The music “provides a sense of connection between sadness and moments of great hope. I was painting with the idea of poetry that transformation can be achieved through its tempo, its intensity and interconnection.”
Manning usually embeds the human figure in swaths of color, but decided that the scale made the painted body too visually noisy. “The main thing was to share the brush with Chris,” she said. “The dancer is the last stroke of the composition.”
